HUMANE CIVILIZATION WORLDWIDE FOUNDATION (HCW)
Activists for Sustainable, Humane Civilizations NOW – become a member Donate Now & Join Our Cause
ABOUT US – MISSION – BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION ABOUT FOUNDERS OF HCW, AUTHORS OF WEBSITE .
HCW is a 501(c)(3) Operating Foundation primarily doing educational work (Texas 11/2017)raft Document – ongoing editing, revisions and additions.
ANNOUNCEMENTS on bottom of page .
Most recently updated /revised: Chapter on CLIMATE EMERGENCY – Mitigating, adjusting and adapting to climate change? We must prevent sliding into “climate hell” and start reversing global warming without delay.
CONTACT US: to get on mailing list, give us feedback, or request a speaker please write to HAe.HCW@gmail.com
HCW is about CULTIVATING loving kindness, giving and forgiving, cooperation, and broad compassion IN PLACE OF vindictiveness, ruthless competition, pursuit of material goods, and ‘us-against-them’ thinking.
- Cultures, the institutions of civilizations, largely shape people’s character, how we deal with natural propensities and express our instincts. Cultural institutions are the main cause of hostilities between individuals, groups, and nations and of the harm to the world’s ecosystems.
- THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY demands immediate bold actions: minimizing energy use and greenhouse gas releases, moving to mostly plant-based diets, sequestering huge amounts of carbon, etc. Living more simply and ethically, halting advertisement- and greed-driven consumerism, will make us healthier and happier The probably most valuable thing individuals can do is influence influential people, write to them, encourage them to propose, government-led action as radical as the U.S.’ response to WWII, rather than “business-as-usual-with-incentives.” Please forward this material to everybody you know:
- Improved institutions have to cultivate ethical thinking, emotions, behaviors and character in individuals.
People and organizations worldwide have to cooperate in improving national and international institutions:
- THE ECONOMIC INSTITUTIONS NEED URGENT REFORMS: governments must create money to fund public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises that will restructure economic activities, and lending by financial institutions must be severely restricted. People need a guaranteed income and good safety nets. Taxation, particularly high taxes on any greenhouse gas releases. must powerfully influence the private sector.
- Developments must be guided by the goals of society, not by prospects of profits for investors.
- ALL FORMS OF BIRTH CONTROL (including abortions) must be readily and confidentially available to women worldwide.
- Unethical uses of the internet and of artificial intelligence must be reined in, particularly surveillance and data gathering, and the Ponzi-scheme-like bitcoin – these waste much computing resources and energy.
- All education, formal and informal must teach empathy, a forgiving attitude, and the pursuit of peace – broad compassionate empathy must replace replace vindictive and ‘us-against-them’ thinking with.
- HCW aspires to create a worldwide movement that studies and addresses recognized problems and pursues worldwide cooperation in establishing civilizations with humane condition and protecting the environment.
- HCW works on creating plans, blueprints, or model frameworks that are based on science and ethical principles and should guide peaceful reforms of economic systems, governments and other institutions of civilizations. Institutions are to bring the best qualities out of individuals. This draft presents a fairly comprehensive framework of proposed institutions: economic, social, governmental, etc. and an evaluation of ethical principles.
If you find this website interesting and stimulating thoughts, please share it with friends and acquaintances /
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You-tube presentation. Abuse-Addiction articles BLOG: political abuse-addiction
Contents, Principal endeavor of HCW, Mission Statement – Preface / Introduction
Donate Now & Join Our Cause=====
ANNOUNCEMENT:
Discussion meeting at the Twin Oaks Library in South Austin. Tuesday 4/30, 6:30-7:45 p.m.: With our weak climate actions: Are we complicit in a genocide? Please contact me for suggestions and/or if you would like to meet with me individually to discuss issues and progress hae.hcw@gmail.com.
We hope to discuss how we can influence developments resulting in us living happier and healthier while halting and starting to reverse global warming.
Our lukewarm climate actions, and industrialized countries building a billion electric steel cars, are not halting the destruction of ecosystems, which many indigenous people depend on; and even more importantly: the densely populated countries of South Asia and other areas are becoming unlivable with heat-related deaths and drought-related crop failures rapidly increasing. We are cooking planet Earth – we must first turn off the burners – that is not happening. Somewhen later we can dream of any luxuries with energy almost free and efforts having brought CO2 levels down to below 350 ppm, but by then people may have figured out – luxuries are not what makes us a healthy and happy people!
Please understand – I am not a pessimist, this is not about “doomism” – this is about realism. Hope and optimism will not save the people who are now dying and will die due to inaction by the industrialized countries.
We all can make a difference; probably not by having personally a very small “carbon footprint” but by demanding honesty from the influencers. Needed radical changes must come from governments, and people need to be taken care of when our toxic consumption economy comes to a halt. I hope when re-elected, President Biden will be willing to make bold moves to stop the de facto genocide that is now taking place and also improve the future of children and families worldwide. Is the USA not in a good (the best?) position to lead?
Please pass this message on to anybody you consider appropriate. I believe young people who do not have a family and older people with some wisdom, close to retirement or retired are most important in attempts to stop our racing to “climate hell” with worldwide violence. At this moment the future does not look pretty, and I mean the coming decades, not future centuries.
We need to create a wider network of organizations that focus on the whole picture, we are in a worldwide war against nature and for-profit corporations, with a very profitable “business-as-usual-with-incentives” approach, cannot save us. Think of this example: Bangladesh, 170 million inhabitants, increasing numbers dying in heat waves, more and more land flooded by the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers from the North, and from the South, as typhoons become more powerful, by salty ocean water, which makes the land infertile, – the Bangladeshi are not welcome in Myanmar, India or anywhere else.
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Previous meetings after Covid interruption (when library closed) (for more details see blog, political)
Discussion Meeting Tuesday 3/12/2024. Discussing human reactions to the climate crisis -Thinking about the climate: How serious is the crisis? What is being done? What should be done? facilitated by the co-founders of HCW
Continue issue of discussion of “How serious is the Climate Crisis?” Why are hardly any people terrified about our future; why are people not studying and discussing how to prevent probable or at least possible horrific disasters in our life-times – why are so many people largely trusting leaders of industries and financial institutions and our government? And discussing our proposals.
My personal views – short summary:
THE RISK OF A GRADUAL ‘ENERGY TRANSITION’ IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE!
We individuals must influence influential people who may be able to sway public opinion and governments: scientists, activists and activist organizations, authors, journalists, etc. – for example: Katherine Hayhoe, Greta Thunberg, leaders of the Sierra Club and of The Union or Concerned Scientists, Al Gore, Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Paul Hawken, Christiana Figueres, Jeff Goodell, Michael E. Mann, David Welles-Wells, etc.
Results of scientific data: We are sliding towards worst-case scenarios. Nobody knows how bad our future will be, if we follow today’s progressive plans, but human suffering will greatly increase. A 2021 world bank report predicts “216 million people could be forced to migrate within their own countries”; The scientist Katherine Hayhoe estimates about one billion, and the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) estimates that around 1.2 billion people will be displaced by 2050.
Climate instability, vicious cycles, and deadly weather catastrophes are likely to worsen at least until 2100. Mass migrations and probably violence worldwide may start long before ‘carbon neutrality’ – expected to be reached in the 2050s. Today’s plans include an ‘energy transition,’ building over a billion electric street vehicles and the necessary infrastructure, piecemeal gradual changes,’ while promoting profit-driven economic growth.
Prevention is much cheaper than dealing with disasters. Our governments must respond to this crisis as decisively as to WWII, when all civilian production was halted. We must save energy and resources in every way possible, also address the abuses of AI and the internet. Public-private partnership nonprofit enterprises must to reform industries and land management; governments must enact high taxes on all greenhouse gas releases and on wealth, and assure that people’s needs are taken care of. Bank lending must be restricted to decrease consumerism and inflation.
Governments must guide progress. We need trees, not cattle; instead of steel cars, a comprehensive rail system including high-speed and light rail lines, most narrow track; and slow electric mini cars. Instead of concrete and steel we must use mostly wood, bamboo, and recycled materials, for buildings, light vehicles, rail cars, bridges, etc. We must sequester huge quantities of carbon: dead and useless organic material may be buried in stagnant water soaked soil, other techniques of carbon sequestration must be further developed.
Radiative cooling paints must be mass-produced and broadly applied worldwide. In buildings, only most used areas should be air conditioned and heated.
Maybe the future is not that bad, some people think it is not, but please imagine: 19 engineers say a plane is safe and one says it is not, would you fly in it?
Living simpler and healthier, closer to nature, with more interpersonal connectedness, people will be happier.
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https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2021/09/13/climate-change-could-force-216-million-people-to-migrate-within-their-own-countries-by-2050#:~:text=Climate%20Change%20Could%20Force%20216,Their%20Own%20Countries%20by%202050.
https://www.economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Ecological-Threat-Register-Press-Release-27.08-FINAL.pdf.
https://www.zurich.com/en/media/magazine/2022/there-could-be-1-2-billion-climate-refugees-by-2050-here-s-what-you-need-to-know
8/18/2022 The Climate Crisis and Ethics
9/22/2022 Addictions – Ethics – Climate
10/27/2022 Economics – Ethics – Climate
12/1/2022 The Important Questions In Life – Ethics? Health and Happiness? Climate?
1/5/2023 Happiness, Meaning in Life, and the Future
2/8/2023 Happiness, Meaning in Life, and the Future 2
3/14/2023 The Climate Crisis: Giving Up Is Not an Option. What are the most effective actions we can take?
4/26/2023 We must halt global warming and escalating fear may be the key to get needed, radical changes enacted
5/30/2023, The Climate Crisis and the Question of “Political Will”
7/6/2023: Corporate CEOs and Politicians Gamble With Our Future: How Can We Stop Them?
8/8 /2023: What does it mean “I care about what global warming does to the world of our children, to the most affected poor?
9/26/2023 Discussion Meeting: Humane Civilization Worldwide: Review of goals and activities.
11/14/2023 What is basically wrong with modern cultures? Is the focus of education what individuals and societies need?
1/5/2024 Thinking about the climate: How serious is the crisis?
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I recently discovered your organization, due to a chance encounter.
I consider myself an environmentalist. I’m a writer, with an undergraduate degree in journalism. For many years, as a newspaper reporter, and for a time, editor for Environmental Action Magazine, and primarily as a freelance writer, I wrote about the environment, worker health and safety and consumer issues. In 1974, I wrote Muscle & Blood, published by EP Dutton, an investigative book, looking at dangerous working conditions in American industry.
Later, I became a Family Practice Physician, and after 22 years in the study and practice of medicine, I’m now retired; I have time again to be politically active and to fight against factors worsening climate change. I’m currently on the City of Austin Environmental Commission, where I try as I can, to advance measures protective of the climate, in order to safeguard and improve the quality of life for residents of Austin.
I’m interested in your organization. Noam Chomsky has pointed out that “there’s very little an individual can do” to affect climate change, but believes organizations may be able to have an impact. I hope that’s true. Thus, my interest in your work.
I know that for me, fear of our changing, more erratic and more destructive weather is a highly motivating factor. Unfortunately, I see too many people ignoring the changing weather almost completely, obliviously, and making choices which, given the current state of our erratic environment, run counter to their best interests. Moving to Austin at present seems a questionable choice; our weather is deteriorating, and Central Texas seems on a trajectory to become less and less habitable. But then, as the entire planet is changing, are there better choices? I think that’s nearly impossible to predict. We live in an interdependent world. Supply chain disruptions, from any cause, can have serious repercussions world-wide, among developed nations. So, we cannot run away from climate change, although it’s tempting to think so!